Where the fun comes in is trying to decide specific instances of species vs. subspecies, not just lumping vs. splitting but identification per se. Can we really justify some of the splitting being done for the sake of protecting small, somewhat unique, populations of broader species? Some of the science is less than objective in this area. What the heck, most of taxonomy is subjective! Until the methodology of cladistics was introduced, there was no quantitative way to handle classification -- until then it was entirely subjective. A basic tenant of science is that if you can't put numbers on it, you don't actually know anything about it. They try to do that with cladistics. Now they can get numbers and now they are starting to really get a handle on relatedness. At the species level, I tend to want to split. If it is a distinguishable population, it should have a unique identifier -- a name. The classification system should not just show us the relatedness of different entities and groups, although that is the definition of phylogeny, after all. I feel it should also give us an idea of the genetic diversity of the groups. Jim Shields ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA